Rethinking Lent This Year (Again)

Last year I wrote an article called Rethinking Lent This Year. I was inspired by the fact that I realized my own sacrifices were on autopilot and I didn’t even know why I was giving up what I was giving up. More importantly, could I add something? The thought of it all!

Anyway, I polled a bunch of people via email and got some great responses. Please read if you are rethinking your Lent; have fallen off the band wagon already; are feeling competitive with yourself or others (just kidding - don’t do that - it’s very much opposite the spirit of Lent); or want to learn something new. I know I did as I wrote it.

For example, one thing I come back to again this year is the decision to enjoy the thing on Sunday which one has given up. Obvious examples: chocolate, beer, wine, donuts, Netflix. As someone explained it to me, there are a few reasons for this. One is that it keeps you humbled. If you think you are just a’cruisin’ to Lent giving up this and that of your own power, to have it reintroduced - and then removed again the following day - can show you how dependent on God you are, actually. And yes, it takes God’s grace to keep me from snorfling seven handfuls of chocolate almonds from my desk drawer each day.

I think there’s another layer of humility, too, which is that if you are giving up all these fatty things you may end up feeling both svelte and smug. That’s not the point of Lent! Stop it! Go eat a donut and remember your sins.

Okay, so you’re probably wondering what I’ve given up. Last year I decided not to really give up anything because I had not been partaking of much alcohol or sweets, anyway. I prayed over some particular intentions, and I also wrote letters to friends with a bit of scripture that fit the season and in which I found a lot of meaning. That was Sirach 35:1-11. I was thinking a lot about relationships. It was a very powerful Lent.

This year, I have indeed been enjoying things like wine and so I have given that up, and all sweets. Also no social media at home/after work. More prayer intentions. I have a card I took from the back of St. Matthew’s with the pictures of all the seminarians in the Archdiocese, and I am praying for them. Writing letters again, and including a poem this time. I will share the poem later; don’t want to ruin the surprise for my friends who read this. I will be writing fewer letters, though.

But overall I am - resting. Resting in God. Remembering that indeed I am from dust and to dust I shall return. Trying slowness, patience, forgiveness, hope. Taking a good, hard look at my relationship with God. Wondering what it means to be helpless before God. Wondering how it is that Jesus himself understands helplessness. I will be revisiting the third week of the Spiritual Exercises.

“I ask for what I desire. Here it is what is proper for the Passion: sorrow with Christ in sorrow; a broken spirit with Christ so broken; tears; and interior suffering because of the great suffering which Christ endured for me” (SE 203).